Warren Entsch (Leichhardt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Serving the people of Leichhardt for more than two decades has been one of the greatest privileges of my life. It is a role that I have undertaken with passion, energy and unwavering commitment, although I have to say I have sometimes ruffled a few feathers. I've always prided myself on listening, acting and delivering for our community. This past election was one of the toughest I have contested but was certainly one of the most important in a generation. Far North Queenslanders flatly refused the high-taxing and divisive politics of those opposite. Now that the election has been run and won, it is time to get on with delivering the projects that I announced during the campaign. I'd like to take the time to speak about each of them and the importance they have for my community.

First is the Captain Cook Highway. The Morrison government will invest $370 million to bust congestion along the Captain Cook Highway so that those, like me, living on the northern beaches can get home to our loved ones faster, safer and sooner. It will dramatically improve the way of life for thousands of residents. The funding for this game-changing project was announced in this year's federal budget. The project, linking the Cairns CBD with the Smithfield bypass, will see significant upgrades to three major roundabouts along the Captain Cook Highway. It will also include additional inbound and outbound lanes between Airport Avenue and Yorkeys Knob roundabout. The project will include significant intersection upgrades at Arnold Street, Whitfield Street, Tom McDonald Drive and Airport Avenue. I'd like to take the opportunity to thank Advance Cairns for their leadership and their unwavering support and advocacy for this project.

Another one is the southern access corridor stage 5, which is for work on the Bruce Highway. Far North Queensland continues to benefit from the largest infrastructure spend in the nation's history. The $180 million project involves a grade separation upgrade at the Bruce Highway and Foster Road intersection in Cairns. This project will build on existing commitments made along the Cairns southern access highway, including upgrades between Edmonton and Gordonvale, Robert Road and Foster Road, and Kate Street and Aumuller Street. The total Bruce Highway package across the five stages is in excess of $1 billion.

The federal government will invest $190 million also towards Peninsula Developmental Road stage 2 to ensure the sealing works along this bucket-list road continue. The Peninsula Developmental Road has been listed as part of the federal government's $3.5 billion Roads of Strategic Importance program. I can tell you, Mr Deputy Speaker Gillespie, when I came into this place in 1996 there wasn't one kilometre of bitumen along the 450-odd kilometres of Peninsula Developmental Road, and it was shut generally for three or four months of the year during the wet season. We now have about 200 kilometres to see the road totally sealed, basically, from Weipa to Cairns. It will have a very significant impact on the livability and on the economy of people living along that very, very critical, soon-to-be-bitumen spine.

The federal government is also investing in other roads. There is another $50 million to improve an iconic tourism route between tropical North Queensland and the Northern Territory. Funding will go towards sealing an unsealed section of the Gulf Savannah road. That is another very, very important road. The Queensland section of the Gulf Savannah road takes in 313 kilometres, and almost 60 per cent of the road is already sealed. Again, like the Peninsula Development Road, we're seeing the start of the bitumen rolling out, as we are also on the Hann Highway, which will basically give us a sealed inland route from Cairns right through to Melbourne, taking us off the main Bruce Highway. It will make a huge difference, cutting the time from Cairns to Melbourne very significantly. This is very much visionary stuff that's been needed for a long time, and it's being rolled out under our government. There are also flood mitigation and a range of other things that will be achieved.

It was great to have my colleague the Deputy Prime Minister, Michael McCormack, and Senator Matt Canavan in Cairns during the campaign for the amazing announcement there, where we announced that we would be investing up to $10 million to ensure the Lakeland Irrigation Area Project was shovel ready. This is another critical project. This investment will ensure that the final engineering and scoping works on this region-defining project are being completed. The project has the potential to unlock over 8,000 hectares of irrigated land and could create more than a thousand jobs during construction, not to mention many local jobs that would be created with the expansion of the region's economy. We know that unlocking the potential of our regional communities goes hand in hand with water security. This will see a small town, the community of Lakeland, grow into a significant regional town, which is something we should be very excited about.

During the campaign I flew to Pormpuraaw, an Aboriginal community on the west coast, and announced that the government will be delivering a historic $105 million investment into the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander councils to fund remote Indigenous housing so that the control of this actually stays in the hands of the communities themselves rather than going through the bureaucracy of the state government where, with the previous NPARIH scheme, a lot of the money was certainly squandered, where we see million-dollar houses being built for individual couples, which is crazy. Under the new rules no more than $500,000 can be spent per house, but the houses can be designed and built within the communities by the communities, giving job opportunities et cetera. We're finding that under that type of program there's a lot of competition for those houses. It's great to see. It also gives a significant amount of empowerment to those communities and a sense of ownership of what they're creating. We're encouraging the state government to match that funding, which they're required to do, and we'd like to see that money also go into the councils so that it can be administered through those councils.

We're also backing traditional owners by investing $5 million in the ongoing construction of seawalls. These ones will be in the Torres Strait, supporting the local communities. They are basically going to be in the central islands within the community there. They are going to be a partnership with the GBK, which is the local PBC or traditional owner group, and My Pathway. The new partnership will maximise the employment and support Torres Strait Islander businesses to deliver the project, again giving significant ownership of the project to the community themselves and having them contributing significantly to dealing with this challenge.

The federal government's $20 million investment ensured the future not only of the Mossman Mill but the entire town and region. The Mossman Mill transition project will unlock economic opportunities in the Mossman community and surrounding Far North Queensland, especially for canegrowers and all those industries which support the existing mill operations. The project will transform not only the mill but also the region through technology and innovation. The project will build on the 560 jobs that the mill already supports and is expected to create an estimated 86 new long-term jobs, which is a major boost for the city. I would like to congratulate Far Northern Milling for their foresight and ingenuity, along with Advance Cairns, the chamber of commerce and the Douglas Shire Council for their advocacy to ensure this project becomes a reality. I would like to, if I could, single out the chair of Far Northern Milling, Maryann Salvetti, for the amazing work she did in putting this whole concept together. What we're going to see now is a mill that will still produce sugar, which mills do, but it's going to transfer into a real biofactory so we're going to see a whole range of products that are going to come out of that which are going to be manufactured using the sugar as a base product.

The Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, also announced $60 million for the Cairns University Hospital. Once completed, it will take enormous pressure off Cairns Hospital's waiting lists and our clinical services. The federal government's investment means that James Cook University can purchase land to deliver world-class medical research through the new Cairns Tropical Enterprise Centre in the Cairns University Hospital precinct. It will enable research and education, and it will enable staff at Cairns Hospital to be relocated to the new facility, freeing up space for about 150 beds in the hospital for patients and clinical services. So, again, a very exciting project.

Another one that's very close to me is the federal funding to invest another $1.3 million to facilitate the second stage of development of the COUCH health services precinct in Manunda. The federal government have funded the purchase of land next to the COUCH Wellness Centre to support the future construction of much-needed short-term accommodation facilities for Far North Queensland patients visiting Cairns for treatment for cancer and other illnesses. That additional funding comes on top of a commitment that I achieved at the last election, the 2016 election, for a $1.5 million investment towards the construction of the COUCH Wellness Centre, which was opened in May this year. Cairns COUCH was founded in 2006 by the late Charlie Woodward and his beautiful wife, Pip, and I worked very closely with the Woodward family to secure $8.3 million initially—this was back in 2007—in federal funding that led to the establishment of the Liz Plummer Cancer Care Centre. The latest investment completes the trifecta of funding that I've fought extremely hard for COUCH. The work they are doing is simply amazing.

Another great one that we announced during the election was that visitors in Far North Queensland will soon be able to walk or cycle the stunning new coastal and hinterland route from Palm Cove to Port Douglas thanks to an $8 million investment from our government. The Wangetti Trail, once complete, will become one of the country's leading adventure-based ecotourism experiences. Funding from the project is part of the government's $50 million national Tourism Icons Package announced in this year's federal budget. The Wangetti Trail was designed by world-renowned trail designer and Cairns local Glenn Jacobs and is a one-of-a-kind experience, attracting hikers and cyclists from Australia and the globe. The Wangetti Trail is expected to create around 150 jobs and will be a significant boost to tourism. This incredible new nature based experience, once up and running, will be a major tourism drawcard for our region. I'd like to thank my colleague Senator Birmingham who braved the elements during the announcement up on Rex Lookout. Soon after we announced the Wangetti Trail—and this is about forward thinking and planning—we then went on to announce another $3.5 million for the relocation and establishment of the Ellis Beach Surf Life Saving Club. That's on the southern end of the trail, which means that the surf club will have the opportunity to capture a lot of those visitors through their restaurant and accommodation they can create there, which will give them a really strong economic base into the future. So we're tying up the ends to make sure that we capture all the economic opportunities.

Another one that I've been working on since I came into this place in 1996 was getting a microgrid or mains-equivalent power north of the Daintree River, and through this election we're one step closer to that via a renewable energy microgrid. We identified a region north of the Daintree River as a site for a standalone environmentally friendly power system. We put our money where our mouth is. We've committed $990,000 worth to the Daintree renewable energy grid, which will take the 100 per cent renewable project to sub already within 12 months. This proposed microgrid will store energy generated by new and existing solar panels, by converting it into hydrogen, which will be stored, generating reliable power and reducing world heritage reliance on diesel fuel generated power, with consumption currently estimated at around five or six million litres a year. This project will also have a battery storage capacity—the first of its kind in this country. I think the grant will support the investigation of new ownership and funding models in the deployment of the microgrid. It is a very, very exciting project and one I would say keep a very close eye on.

We also put $4 million in to create more opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students to complete year 12 through AFL Cape York House in Cairns. I had the privilege of announcing the additional funding at the official opening of the federally funded AFL Cape York Girls House at Redlynch. The extra $4 million will ensure that the AFL Cape York boys and girls houses continue their great work in providing educational support, training and opportunities for students from some of our most remote communities.

We also put $2 million into Cairns Hockey, which is another very, very exciting one. This is going into an Aspire to be Deadly program there, supporting young women making positive life choices and broadening their opportunities. It is a very unique program very successfully run through Cairns Hockey. It has our young Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal women engaging with Indigenous ambassadors, providing mentoring support as well as connection to their own culture and tradition. I congratulate Cairns Hockey on the fabulous job that they have done in that area.

These projects that I have outlined are big-ticket items, and I am proud to have delivered those into the area. However, there are several more projects that I announced during the campaign that, while the amount of money is not quite as great, I think are equally significant. Why? Because these are community based projects and ones that make a real difference in people's lives and projects that will further enhance our community. One was $418,000 towards the Cairns Cycling Club for an upgrade in that area, which is going to make a huge difference. All of these sporting ones, of course, go towards a vision that I have of establishing Cairns as the fourth tropical sports conditioning centre in the world, after Hong Kong, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. This goes a long way to providing the infrastructure that's necessary for us to be able to play in this field.

A million dollars went to the Cairns Men's Shed. The Men's Shed are renting part of a property that is owned by the Scouts Association, and the Men's Shed have done a huge amount of work there. This gives the Men's Shed—a wonderful organisation—the opportunity to acquire that property and to be able to have it as a permanent base. There was $500,000 towards the Paws and Claws animal shelter in Port Douglas, another very, very worthy project. There was $500,000 towards Cairns Basketball. There were also smaller amounts. Importantly the Cairns Men's Shed got $12,000, and $110,000 went towards the Port Douglas Cairns AFL. This went into a club up there, the Crocs up at Port Douglas. As you drive out to the airport, you'll see the Duntroon oval with the white picket fence. Well, we are going to transport that fence up to the Crocs oval in Port Douglas. Aesthetically, it is absolutely beautiful, but what is going to be particularly important about it that it is going to be made out of recycled plastics and it will represent literally millions of pieces of discarded plastic around the oval—so a very, very significant piece. These organisations, as I say, are many of the great organisations in my community, and they make a real difference to people's lives, irrespective of age, race or gender. The local groups of course are the lifeblood of our communities and it is important that we support them wherever possible.

Finally, I would like to take the opportunity to publicly thank and place on the record the work of my amazing staff. They worked tirelessly through the election campaign to ensure that I had the opportunity to deliver the projects that I've just mentioned. I just want to place their names on the record. My lasting gratitude and my thanks to Tamara Srhoj, Adam Davies, Samuel Batt, Natasha Sambo, Rosie Korman, Megan Carey and Tanya Yates, from up in the Torres Strait. I'm sure all members would agree we are only as good as the staff that we have working with us. They are the ones that really have our backs and they're the ones that really make us look good. So I say thank you again very much indeed for a job well done.

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